Interview with Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis: No budget, no pay

Chief Political Analyst Boris Epshteyn talks to Rep. Ron DeSantis (R - Fla.) about the need for a federal government budget and his support for "no budget, no pay." (Sinclair Broadcast Group)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Boris Epshteyn formerly served as a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign and served in the White House as Special Assistant to The President and Assistant Communications Director for Surrogate Operations.

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) - The federal government could shut down again in just about a month. While Congress reached a deal on spending on February 9, there is still no long-term budget in place to actually put the money to work. The current stop gap continuing resolution runs out on March 23.

I discussed how important a budget is for the government and the military with the Chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fl). He has proposed a policy of “no budget, no pay.”

“The way that this is supposed to work is that both houses of Congress do a budget, they get together to iron out the differences, and that’s the fiscal blueprint for the country and then what you do is you start writing each individual appropriation bill to the budget. So, you do the budget in April, maybe you reconcile it by May. Then you pass the funding bill for the military for the whole year so that can be signed into law before the fiscal year starts and then the military knows what it has and it can plan and govern itself accordingly," DeSantis said.

"But what we do now, is we very rarely even do a budget between the two chambers but then once you get to the end of the fiscal year a lot of times the appropriations bill, I don’t think the Senate has passed an appropriations bill in years. So you end up doing a CR or maybe a minibus or all this other stuff. That is not the way to go and so, I think if you don’t do the budget, then I think the pay should stop,” DeSantis said.

Here is the bottom line: I agree with Congressman DeSantis. If our elected officials cannot do a basic part of their jobs and pass a budget for each fiscal year, they should not got paid.